“I don’t care what they may say or do,
what they may know or where they’ll go,
Jesus is just alright. He’s my friend.
He took me by the hand, let me far from this land. Jesus is just alright.”
-“Jesus is Just Alright” lyrics
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus]: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Jesus is one of four things…
LIAR – LUNATIC – LEGEND – or LORD
Mark 8:27-30 New International Version (NIV)
“Who do people say I am?”
They [the disciples] replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
John 14:9-14 (NIV)
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Mark 14:61-64 (NIV)
“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
They all condemned him as worthy of death.
The books of the bible and the first church began to form within a handful of years after His [Jesus’] death. Yes, I did say handful, not decades or centuries. There is great time evidence that shows some of the first letters that became the gospels beginning to surface in churches and gatherings within three to five years after the crucifixion. The actual gospels were written in the decades to follow as the disciples traveled to spread the word. Even in those decades, the people who knew Jesus, and even those enemies of Jesus, would have boldly stood up and debunked any legendary aspects of the gospels.
-“Apologetics 101: Lunatic, Liar, Legend, or Lord?” Beyond Faith Ministry, posted January 9, 2008.
Liar, Lunatic, Legend? We choose Lord. What about you?